Using Silicone Caulk: Helpful Tips and Proper Clean Up

Silicone is an important part of keeping our RV sealed but it can be very, very messy. A couple of tips when using silicone, first of all if you're gonna be doing a lot of it and wiping it off of around windows, cap, ceiling that type of stuff, I would use one of the a synthetic gloves like this, the rubberized gloves. I can just put that on, run my fingers across it. Then I don't have it all over myself. It's nice and smooth so I don't have to worry about the bead I leave on the side of the RV. There are a couple of other things like this little paddle here, they make a variety of different angles. So I don't even have to touch the silicone. I just simply run it along the edge like this. They do make different angles so I can put a larger bead on it. If I have a straight 90 or a different type of crease that I'm, that I'm going across here, the important thing is if you get silicone on the side of an RV, you want to get it off as soon as possible. Because if you leave it on, it's gonna start to attract dust, dirt, it's gonna blacken. And then it's also gonna be really hard to get off and this happens to be one that we, we put on here a little earlier, and you can see that it, it doesn't wipe off very well. It still stays in here. Now there are some products on the market. There are some silicones that you can actually buy that will clean up with water and soap. However, most of those are not really good for outside use, they're not gonna dry as well. It's gonna take a lot longer and they, they just don't seal quite as well. So we need to look at some products that we can take this off with. Now, the old school guys would just use lighter fluid or they would use rubbing alcohol or product called a D 12, any type of acetate. You gotta be careful with these if you're taking it off fiberglass or decals, especially, you don't wanna ruin that surface. You don't wanna ruin the gel coat on fiberglass but this one you can see here, we just put a little bit on and it does wipe it off fairly well. Now the problem with this again, it's, you know it's a pretty caustic material, if I get some on my hands, which I seem to do all the time when I'm working with silicone, it's really sticky. There's a product on the market here that I like it's called Goo Gone and this just very mild. It will do a variety of different cleanups, but you just put a little bit of this on here, move these away. And we seeing inside the nails. And the thing I like about is I got to, I got a little bit of dry skin here anyway, and I got a few cracks, you know in some scrapes and stuff like that. If I were to use the lighter fluid it would be stinging pretty well. This stuff is very mild, it doesn't hurt my hands at all and as you can see, it takes silicone off very well. So if you're working with silicone, you know take a little precautions, find some of the materials that works best for you and and you can make the best of a messy situation.